Jurgis

I'll be at a conference in New Orleans Feb 2-6. If anyone is interested to get together for a lunch/tea/beer/whatever, shoot me a message.

IMO just TurboTax online version. Whatever you pay for it will more than cover the effort spent doing taxes by hand. Unless your situation is highly out of norm and/or you want to see how all calculations are done (but even that is traceable in TT mostly). Disclosure: I use TT online for personal quite complicated taxes and for some relatives that have pretty trivial form.

I use Google's Project Fi too and it's great and cheap. Couple comments though: you are limited to 3-5 phone models that Fi supports. If you're happy with that, then it's fine; If not, then Fi is not for you. There is also a risk that if your phone breaks, you may have no choice of what phone to buy at all. There was half year when Fi had only Pixel for sale. A single phone model. That's it. Not quite true. Their phone service in US is on top of both T-Mobile and Sprint. That's why you can only use couple phones that support switching between the two on the fly. If you are on WiFi, your calls will go through WiFi. This may be good or bad. I and my friends experienced both incoming and outgoing calls not going through because (likely) Fi was trying to route them through WiFi and failing. This is annoying when it happens.

We have two Targets near us: a large one and a small one that opened in former Shaws supermarket. Both are new(ish) stores with pretty modern layout. Definitely not dirty/disorganized. OTOH, we don't shop in either of them, so... We don't quite understand the logic of opening Target in former Shaws. Target has both clothes and groceries in what was not a huge grocery store previously. Which means that both clothes and food selection is very limited. My wife went there when they opened and gave $5($10?) free coupon, but we never went there afterwards. We would have been much happier if a real grocery shop opened there... FWIW.

Sad. RIP.

Thanks Grafter. I think your answers and pointers cover most of what I needed.

OK, I moved the topic to Personal Finance. Thanks @scorpioncapital. This answers questions 1-3. Now only questions 4-5 remain, which might be too obscure for this forum. But if anyone knows answers, please post. And additional question: 5a. If you have foreign RE and gift it to someone, are there any US taxes payable and what has to be reported? (My guess: this goes into your estate accounting, but I'm very fuzzy on how that is accounted/reported and especially with foreign RE that is gifted to foreign individual).

Thanks guys. Anyone with knowledge about items 1-5? Specific answers: @John - I'll ask Sanjeev to move the thread. @rpadebet - No, this is not yet another bitsomething thread. @rb - yeah, I know it's tax professional. But 90%+ tax professionals don't know this area - they just do local US taxes and not much clue about international situations. You are right that I need a pro in this specific area. That's why I am asking for recommendations. :) And I'm not asking for tax evasion advice - I'm interested in the fully-compliant above-board rules. BTW, aren't you in Canada? ;) @whiskybravo - thanks. That answers questions 6-7.

Anyone knows answers to following questions. My guesses/DD are also listed, but I'd like confirmation or disconfirmation. 1. If someone gifts you foreign RE, is this reportable to IRS? (I believe no - not until sale) 2. If you buy foreign RE, is this reportable to IRS? (I believe no - not until sale). 3. If you sell foreign RE, is this reportable to IRS? (I believe yes, and taxable yes). 4. What is the cost basis on foreign RE that is gifted to you? Zero? What documents would work to establish non-zero cost basis? 5. Is there a diff if you inherit foreign RE from a non-US person? (I.e. there are no US documents/probate/inheritance, it's all non-US). 6. If you have non-US bank account, you have to report this to IRS on the tax form. Has anyone done this and are there immediate negative consequences? Or it's just formality (that maybe raises your audit chance and/or chance of you being tracked by three letter agencies)? 7. Same as 6, but bank account is above $large-sum (10K? 100K? 1M?)? Actual info preferred, not speculations. :) Asking for a friend obviously. 8) Thanks for any info. Would also be interested in contact info for a professional (CPA?) who knows this area and could answer these questions profesionally.

What's with LILA showing up twice in Fido portfolio for last couple of days (there's LILA and there's G5480U138 which is LILA too)? I'm happy with a quick double :P but what the...?

Way to go Sanjeev! http://i2.wp.com/cryptorials.io/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/shut-up-and-take-my-bitcoin.jpg

Happy New Year! 8)

OT. If you keep scrolling down after the article, you'll notice that you get next article from 2017. So the answer is that picture/etc. are likely autogenerated together with the whole article/webpage. It's not your 1992 WWW anymore... 8)

It's funny that people like Lewis ... until he disses the sacred cow Buffett ... and then he's wrong and snarky and should go write another book ... but hopefully not about Buffett. ;D (Yeah, Lewis is smart and he did not write snarky book about Buffett - you've got to give it to him - the guy knows how to build his reputation rather than destroying it. And I've never liked Michael Lewis.) A lot what Lewis said in this article is correct: Buffett has a lot of double standards. "I say X, but I do Y, but it's OK because I really meant XX and Y does not contradict it". Yes, rail against Wall Street, but invest into it and preserve the Wall Street behavior even at company (Solly) that he controls. Yes, rail against executive compensation, but never vote against it when on company boards. Yes, rail against derivatives, but it's OK to invest into and admire one of the biggest derivative cos. Anyway, there was already a thread on CoBF (or two or three) about these contradictions, so there's little point to repeat and list them all. Some people still call Buffett a man of integrity. Well, me, I never understood what "integrity" means. And Buffett as an example does not help. With that said, Buffett is human and is still likely better human being than a lot of investment/hedge fund managers and/or CEOs. He has done a lot of good and is still doing it. But that's again a conclusion of the other threads on Buffett topic @CoBF too... 8) Edit: And, yes, Lewis was likely wrong about EMT and Buffett being coin throwing random fluke.

Ez way to invest into bitcoin. 8)

What kind of investor are you? Obviously, sell them to the highest bidder on a shady corner (or Craiglist). You should have asked your doc for another prescription or two, you could have funded your BRK purchasing habit from the proceeds. 8)

I was going to check on OTC markets, but they say Pink/No Info, so I did not dig further, since I won't be able to buy it anyway: https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/PDRX/quote

Decade is a long time. I'm sure Philip Tetlock is mostly right and predictions longer than 5 years are no better than guesswork. That said and for fun: 1. BAM - good business, good management. From shareholder point of view the issue is that they might become too large for good returns/good investments/moving the needle. 2. MKL - good management, not clear how the business gonna go, tough to invest in public equities at current price points and expect great returns. 3. CMPR - no comment . 8) 4. CSU - good business, good management. Scaling may or may not work well. If I had to invest into just one, I'd buy BAM. If I had to predict the winner in business metrics (not necessarily share price), I'd bet on CSU.

Nobody answered here. I'm still interested. Did not yet have time to dig deeper myself, just read short blurbs. Jurgis, I've wasted my time researching and reading what Sham has done/written. Don't waste yours. OK. Thanks guys. 8) Edit: For posterity, I redid the search on CoBF and this time I found the following links: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/wtf!/msg306751/#msg306751 http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/paragon-technologies-pgnt/msg308971/#msg308971 There are couple other threads with possibly more positive mentions of PGNT but no details, so I'm not posting the links. These should be findable through search too.

Nobody answered here. I'm still interested. Did not yet have time to dig deeper myself, just read short blurbs.

Just for fun: which companies listed in the original poll have "management with a reputation for brilliance" and which ones "tackle a business with a reputation for bad economics"? Audience wants to know. 8)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/?utm_term=.3724c978c057

As expected.

Obviously some envious old school wannabe on big bank and Fed payroll who did not buy bitcoin early enough and could not hack blockchain so that it would show he did. ;D 8)

Funny. A lot of people say it's a great book. I did not even finish it. I found it a bunch of outdated self-serving boring blah blah. And I mostly like biographical/finance/investing books.